The present invention relates to systems and methods for processing multi-modal communications, particularly within a workgroup.
Individuals within workgroups often communicate with each other in various modes of communication including voice mail, electronic mail (email), instant text messaging, text documents, etc. Presently, multi-modal communication systems for workgroups may comprise separate and independent solutions for each of these communication modes, and this may limit the ways in which communications from various individuals and sources may be used together.
Consider, for example, a health care workgroup in which a physician is assessing a patient, and has received some or all of the following pieces of communication: a voice tape recording of the patient's physical examination; laboratory results received by email; reference documents that contain text (e.g., the patient's medical history or an online text books); a voice mail from a radiologist about what information the patient's X-ray contains; and various reference documents (e.g., web medication sites) that contain charts. All of these various pieces of communication using different communication modes may be potentially important sources of information that may aid the physician in making the correct diagnosis for the patient's condition, and the information needed may in fact be scattered between two or more pieces of information in different communication modes.
What is needed is a more effective way for processing multi-modal communications, particularly within a workgroup.